A Flagstaff soldier who died in Iraq committed suicide after she refused to participate in interrogation techniques being practiced by her U.S. Army intelligence unit, according to a report about an Army investigation aired by a Flagstaff radio station.
U.S. Army Spc. Alyssa R. Peterson, 27, died Sept. 15, 2003, in Tel Afar, an Iraqi city of about 350,000 residents in the northern part of the country.
At the time, the U.S. Department of Defense listed her cause of death as a “noncombat weapons discharge.”
Spc. Peterson’s mother, Bobbi Peterson, reached at her home in northern Arizona, said she became aware of the KNAU report Wednesday. Neither she nor her husband Richard has received any official documents that contained information outlined in the KNAU report.
Until she and Richard have had an opportunity to read the documents, she said she is unable to comment.
Spc. Peterson had been assigned to C Company, 311th Military Intelligence Battalion, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), which is based in Fort Campbell, Ky. She was in Iraq as part of Operation Iraqi Freedon, functioning as an Arabic-speaking intelligence specialist.
On Tuesday, a KNAU Public Radio reporter, who had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the reports of the criminal investigation into Peterson’s death, aired a report that Peterson had committed suicide.
According to KNAU, an Army investigation found that Peterson had objected to interrogation techniques that were being used on prisoners.
“She refused to participate after only two nights working in the unit known as the cage,” stated the KNAU report.
She was subsequently assigned to monitoring Iraqi guards at the base gate and was sent to suicide prevention training, stated the KNAU report. And on Sept. 15, Army investigators concluded she shot and killed herself with her service rifle, according to KNAU.
The KNAU report also stated that Army spokespeople for Peterson’s unit refused to describe the interrogation techniques and that all records of the techniques have been destroyed.
I’ve said several times on this blog that the history of intervention in the Middle East is the history of unintended consequences. Well, this isn’t quite what I had in mind, but it does seem to qualify:
We have one question this morning for Sen. Rick Santorum, Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, John Hinderaker, Roger Simon, Stephen Hayes, and a self-proclaimed “army” of right-wing bloggers.
Oh yeah, and President George W. Bush:
Why are you helping Iran to develop a nuclear bomb?
By now you may have seen the lead story in today’s New York Times. It turns out that the Bush administration’s unprecendented — and apparently foolish beyond belief — decision to agree to post thousands upon thousands of raw and in some cases unexamined or untranslated documents captured in the 2003 invasion of Iraq on the Internet had a very unintended consequence.
Some of the Baghdad papers, from before the first war in 1991, included the most detailed instructions for making a nuclear weapon ever placed on the Internet:
The documents, roughly a dozen in number, contain charts, diagrams, equations and lengthy narratives about bomb building that nuclear experts who have viewed them say go beyond what is available elsewhere on the Internet and in other public forums. For instance, the papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.
Experts worry that the documents could have been very helpful to a rogue state trying to assemble a nuclear weapon.
Especially Iran:
Ray E. Kidder, a senior nuclear physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, an arms design center, said “some things in these documents would be helpful†to nations aspiring to develop nuclear weapons and should have remained secret.
A senior American intelligence official who deals routinely with atomic issues said the documents showed “where the Iraqis failed and how to get around the failures.†The documents, he added, could perhaps help Iran or other nations making a serious effort to develop nuclear arms, but probably not terrorists or poorly equipped states. The official, who requested anonymity because of his agency’s rules against public comment, called the papers “a road map that helps you get from point A to point B, but only if you already have a car.â€
That’s the story, but the backstory behind how this happened is even more remarkable, in a way.
It happened because after the White House invaded a Middle Eastern country based upon a web of lies about weapons of mass destruction and phony ties to al-Qaeda, the neoconservatives were desperate for any shred of evidence that might belatedly prove they were right after all, and enlisted their blogger backers to become amateur WMD Sherlock Holmes’.
It happened because a so-called “army of Davids” — in reality, the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, the folks who never met a war in the Middle East they didn’t like as long as there was someone else to enlist and take an IED blast for “the team” — wanted to wage war on the homefront, from the pajama-clad safety of their Hewlitt Packards.
And it happened because pandering politicans, including Santorum (who in what is already shaping up as one of the great political ironies of our time, is running an anti-Bob Casey ad with a nuclear mushroom cloud) and even the president of the United States, would rather listen to the mouth-foaming right-wing keyboarders from “the base” than the actual grownups who work for the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
As the clock winds down to the midterm elections, Dennis Perrin points out we shouldn’t believe much if anything will change if Democrats are running Congress. In a three-part series of bleakness, he provides his own personal political history here and here, and then gloomily winds it up here.
Wow. Yet another gay conservative has been outed, this time one of the most powerful leaders of the Religious Right :
Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and founder and leader of the Colorado Springs-based New Life Church, stepped down Thursday following allegations that he has had a three-year homosexual affair with a male prostitute.
Haggard resigned as president of the national association and placed himself on administrative leave from his church.
Mike Jones, a self-professed male escort, claimed publicly on Wednesday to have had a three-year affair with Haggard, during which Haggard allegedly ingested methamphetamine. Haggard denied the affair Wednesday night to KUSA Channel 9News.
But today, Haggard stated he could “not continue to minister under the cloud created by the accusations made on Denver talk radio…”
The sad thing about this is that Ted Haggard seems to be, relatively speaking, one of the good guys (at least, as close to “good” as you’re likely to find in the evangelical movement). Here’s a choice bit from a profile on Haggard from Christianity Today :
“Evangelical does not mean any particular political ideology,” Haggard continues. “The African American [evangelical] community has an honorable concern for social justice, and that affects their politics. That concern comes from the Scripture. The Anglo community has a different history, so different Scriptures stand out to them. To the Anglo [evangelical] community, most of their sermons are theological. It’s salvation by grace through faith, and other theological points, so social-justice issues don’t have the same compelling justification.”
. . .
Haggard is a loyal member of the Religious Right who dials in for a White House conference call every Monday. Yet he embraces ecological concerns and says the Supreme Court made a good decision in the Lawrence v. Texas case, ordering the government out of the private lives of homosexuals.
Haggard thinks churches should keep their doctrinal distinctives to themselves, but he broadcasts political stands that some NAE members find objectionable. (When he produced a memo last spring listing “judicial restraint” at the top of the NAE’s priorities and “care for creation” at the bottom, the NAE board made clear they didn’t share his priorities.) Talking with Haggard, it isn’t entirely clear why politics should be argued in public, but doctrine shouldn’t.
It’s nice to see that Haggard takes a more moderate stand one some social issues (like breaking ranks with his fellow fundies over civil unions), but the impression I keep getting from Haggard is that he is, like so many of his peers in the evangelical leadership, a politician first and a man of god second. The CT profile even calls him on it :
Haggard isn’t searching for perfect consistency. He is attracted to what works. For him, everything seems to work these days. He loves to drop names of the politicians and journalists who have called. But he’s not stuck on politics. Should the political scene change and his influence wane, he would move on to the next thing.
. . .
But personality-driven and media-centric organizations don’t necessarily develop strong institutional foundations. Politicians are notoriously fickle. Today’s darlings are tomorrow’s has-beens.
And as the Bible amply warns, success is seductive. Haggard’s optimistic evangelicalism could become self-congratulatory religion-lite, baptizing the American way. It could turn evangelicalism into the church wing of the Republican Party. It could wrap free-market individualism around the Cross, confusing material wealth and personal happiness with spiritual riches. It could neglect the Cross altogether. The new evangelicalism that Haggard represents suffers such temptations, most obviously in the prosperity gospel.
While Haggard’s rhetoric doesn’t perfectly mirror the hate-mongering that defines the politicians of the “religious” right, his political activism is getting him in trouble. Though Haggard is, to a degree, a moderating force within the evangelical community, his accuser has come forward because of Haggards hypocrisy on gay marriage and Colorado’s upcoming homophobic ballot initiative.
Mike Jones, 49, of Denver, made his allegations on the Peter Boyles show on KHOW 630 AM, saying he was compelled to come forward because he believes Haggard, an opponent of same-sex unions, is being hypocritical.
“After sitting back and contemplating this issue, the biggest reason is being a gay man all my life, I have experience with my friends, some great sadness of people that were in a relationship through the years,” and were not able to enjoy the same rights and privileges as a married man and woman, Jones told Boyles on air.
“I felt it was my responsibility to my fellow brothers and sisters, that I had to take a stand, and I cannot sit back anymore and hear (what) to me is an anti-gay message.”
Let this be a warning to the religious hypocrites who exploit their own faith for political gain. Matthew 26:52
“Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.”
Then again, whenever these self-appointed arbiters of moral purity turn out to be hypocrites, my reaction is more like that other religious J.C…Jack Chick :
If Ted Haggard wasn’t the leader in a religious and political movement whose modus operandi was the demonizing of homosexuals, he’d probably still have a job. HAW HAW HAW
UPDATE : Check out Haggard’s soon-to-be-legendary appearance in the documentary Jesus Camp (via Americablog) :
I’m going to offer up a couple more of those promotional posters from the last book tour at the same price this one sold on eBay for, $150 plus shipping. I’ve only got a few, so if you want me to hold one for you, email me quickly: tomtomorrow(at)earthlink(dot)net. (Click through to the auction for more details about the poster.)
